There is hope in the darkness

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed tries to come to terms with the recent events in France and Egypt

A projection of the Eiffel Tower is displayed on the side of New York City's Flatiron building on November 18, 2015 in New York City. Andrew Burton / Getty Images/AFP

Many Paris, 129 dead. Beirut, 43 dead. Baghdad, 26 killed. Yola, Nigeria, 32 killed.

It’s hard not to feel depressed or overwhelmed with the recent news. For a while I switched off the TV and stopped reading online news reports. My heart just couldn’t take it.

It felt relentless, each new revelation more heartbreaking and blood-curdling than the last. The hashtags came thick and fast – #PrayForParis. #TerrorismHasNoReligion.

The icons followed, with Facebook profile pics being overlaid with the French flag, and the Eiffel Tower sketched into the peace icon. Landmarks around the world have been lit up with the colours of the French flag. These were small comforting actions. Important symbols, harmless perhaps; although they’ve sparked a debate about the politics of mourning.

Out in the real world, the responses include understandable anger, but also a thirst for revenge. Knee-jerk rage and death: the bombing of Raqqa, raids on homes across France, demands to prove loyalty. And on the street: Muslim women attacked on the streets, violence against neighbours.

Each time this happens the same arguments are rehearsed – rightful compassion, recoil at horror, assertion of the importance of decent values, freedoms, of a respectful way of life. But now there also follows a roster of counter arguments too, that call out the way in which some lives are assessed as more important than others, of how news coverage reveals latent tropes such as all Muslims being terrorists, or how brown people killing brown people isn’t news. How much coverage did the massacre by Boko Haram of fifty-nine sleeping boarding school pupils in Yobe State in Nigeria gather last year?

There are the seemingly ludicrous questions: why do all Muslims want to kill everyone? Fear pushes out logic and humanity.Politicians mobilise in the period of mourning to erode our liberties and push agendas even while we are chided for scoring political points instead of grieving. The frustration at hampering from action is itself a root of the depression. If we cannot do anything, if nothing makes a difference, then why bother?

We enter the same cycle of fatalities – horror and war on constant repeat – with our actions at best futile and at worst contributing to the escalation of violence, hatred and death.It feels like hurtling along some kind of roller coaster with the destination on a loop, the horror inescapable, the screaming inevitable, but with no escape. No wonder we feel depressed.

But there must be an escape. We need to find hope; and there is hope, always.When we join the dots between the horrific attacks perpetrated around the world, we create a ring of resistance, standing together, demonstrating that human life is valuable, equal and treasured wherever and whomever it is. This is the intractable resolve to stand together, so that we have a better chance to defeat those who prefer bombs to unity, who surely rejoice at disarray.

Only by imagining a future where attack and counter-attack based on false ideas of “our” way or the terrorists’ way are consigned to history can we nurture the collective social resources required to neutralise the malaise and depression we feel. We must mourn, of course. But in the darkness, we must find hope.

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and blogs at www. spirit21.co.uk